Steve Garfield's Lens

Jerry from It's JerryTime! calls Steve Garfield, the Paul Revere of the Blogosphere. Garfield has been promoting videoblogging since January of 2004.

From 1997 to 1999, Garfield was a producer and wacky sidekick on the Karlson and McKenzie radio show. Since the mid 1990s, he has been active on the Internet. Garfield hand-coded his own blog from November 18, 1997 to April 1, 1999 as a daily update for Karlson and McKenzie radio show listeners. Garfield was the first paid BloggerPro account user and has been updating his weblog, Off On A Tangent, daily since November 9, 2000.

Garfield got his first break in video broadcasting as the host and producer of the live weekly pop-music/video/call-in public access television program Steve's Show. He also hosted radio programs for colleges in the area including Amherst College, Salem State College, Smith College and Boston College, where he still fills in regularly.

In 1984 Garfield was one of the founding members of The Boston Computer Society's Macintosh User Group. He was its meeting coordinator, recruiting and scheduling guest presenters for its monthly meetings. Steve's work with BCS*Mac, along with other volunteers, led to the group eventually becoming the largest Macintosh user group in the world.

In 1995, Garfield became a presenter for WGBH's annual televised auction. While volunteering for WGBH, he produced and wrote scripts for over 100 video segments for the 2001 auction.

In April of 2002, Garfield began experimenting with putting moving images on the net consisting of still images set to music. In July of 2002, Garfield purchased a Canon GL/2 and the road to producing videos was opened. On July 24, 2002, Garfield put his first video up on the web, the now-forgotten 'Inside a trashcan.'

In January of 2003, Garfield discovered Sonrenson Squeeze at MacWorld San Francisco and wrote up a How To on his blog, for video editors using Final Cut Pro, who wanted to get their video on the web. He was also a key figure at BloggerCon 2002/3, held at Harvard Law School.

On January 1, 2004, Garfield made a New Year resolution to make putting video on the web easier, and documented it with a new video blog, and his video post, '2004: The Year of the Videoblog.'

Garfield's video blog features Vlog Soup a regular free tour of video blogs from all over the world.

Vlog Soup is Garfield's video compilation of some of his favorite recent video blogs.  It's his way to help provide a filter to the avalanche of new video blog content that is being created every day.

In 2005, Garfield created the The Carol and Steve Show, and ended up doing one show a week. The Carol and Steve Show continued in 2006 and into 2007.

On July 25, 2004, Garfield made his first video blog report from the Democratic Convention in Boston with the post, 'Here's my first DNC Video Report'

On November 14, 2004, Garfield created his first blog post with video as an enclosure in an RSS 2.0 feed.

On January 22, 2005, the first vloggercon was held in NYC. Garfield helped co-ordinate this free conference, which was the first face-to-face meeting of videobloggers.

On February 3, 2005, Garfield posted what we believe to be the first video blog post from a United States elected politician, Boston City Councillor John Tobin.

On May 27, 2005, Steve Garfield's Video Blog and The Carol and Steve Show joined Akimbo's Growing Library of Programming.

On July 8th, 2005, Garfield co-ordinated and hosted the first Meet the Vloggers gathering at the Apple SoHo Store in NYC."

On September 10, 2006, the first PodCamp was held in Boston. Garfield
helped co-ordinate this free conference.

CURRENTLY
Garfield is author of Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business.

It's the latest Book in David Meerman Scott's New Rules of Social Media Series Teaches Businesses How To Use Online Video to Accumulate Customers.


Garfield has been featured in Newsweek, Time, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, and Boston Globe and on CNN, BBC, and BusinessWeek.com. He blogs regularly at Off On A Tangent, which has received over 1 million visitors, posts videos at Steve Garfield's Video Blog, (http://SteveGarfield.blogs.com), and can be found on twitter at http://twitter.com/stevegarfield where he has over 18,000 followers.

Garfield has advised many of the web's early video startups on user interface, including Seesmic, Livestream, Qik, TubeMogul, and blip.tv. He is the founder of Boston Media Makers and has helped the group to spread to other cities including New York and Washington, DC.

He was chosen as the Boston correspondent for the pioneering video podcast, Rocketboom.com, and he also provides citizen journalism reports for CNN iReport, The Uptake, and techPresident. Garfield lectures at Boston University, Northeastern and Emerson College.

Join us in Boston on the first Sunday of each month at a Boston Media Makers meeting.